6 ms·

Especially a problem because for almost all men a career and supporting family (maybe the hardest thing to figure out in life) is non optional, whereas half the

Especially a problem because for almost all men a career and supporting family (maybe the hardest thing to figure out in life) is non optional, whereas half the female friends I have from college have abandoned careers to saddle up to a breadwinner ... I mean I kind of want that option but men don't really have it. Does anyone ever really discuss this social reality that makes it different for men v women in real world?

cjohnson318 5y ago
> Especially a problem because for almost all men a career and supporting family (maybe the hardest thing to figure out in life) is non optional... What do you mean? Of course those are optional. If you don't want a career, you're not going to have one. If you don't want to get married and support a family, then you don't have to. I mean, "saddle up to a breadwinner" is an extremely demeaning thing to say about a whole class of people. The reality is that men dominate all desirable, successful professions, so the probability of a man "saddling up" to a woman that makes significantly more than him is very small.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Without a career or at least some sort of good job, most men are extremely unattractive as long term partners for women. They can't just find a wife to support them while they look after the kids. So they'll end up without a career and without a family, which can be a very sad existence. For women, families are easier to come by regardless of career status.
  - throw737858 5y ago
    Imagine some people retire in peace at 50. What a sad, sad, pathetic existence :)
    - exporectomy 5y ago
      Retirement is often sad and pathetic.
      - graphtradr 5y ago
        Exactly. I am almost 50 myself. Retire and do what? Wait do die? Drink wine all day and wait to die? There isn't much to me that is worth doing that wouldn't produce some kind of income. Still so much I want to do yet, I don't have time for retirement.
        kwdc 5y ago
        Why retire at all? Depending on what you want to do, why not just do it for as long as you can?
        SyzygistSix 5y ago
        Ride bicycles and/or motorcycles. Travel. Hike. Read. Learn things. Volunteer. Cooking is fun. Gardening as well. I'm at a loss for how people can get bored and I don't even game or watch much in the way of movies or television. I think for some people they get attuned to work so much that they don't remember what life is like without it.
        ryandrake 5y ago
        Totally agree. I don’t think I’ve been bored since I was a teenager. Every day I think to myself, all the things I could do with extra time in the day, if I didn’t have to work for a living. I am counting down the days until I retire! My nightmare actually is I die the day after I retire, just as I’m getting ready to start living my life!
        exporectomy 5y ago
        Have you actually experienced a long period (year or more) with no obligations like work or school? It's much easier to be motivated when you're busy than when there's no real need for your effort or deadline for anything. I know some people manage great and have very active retirements but some just fade into passivity. Keep an eye out for the danger warned by John Mellencamp - "Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone".
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- mattparcens 5y ago
  Potentially demeaning nomenclature aside, do men and women have a differential opportunity to [better phrase], and if not, is this fair? And while it might be nice for the men who dominate all desirable, successful professions, does this help the median man? They're all individuals, after all.
  - cjohnson318 5y ago
    Based on my experience, I do not believe women have a better or easier "differential opportunity" when it comes to finding a partner and starting a family than men. I think "everything is easier for women because they're sexy" is an old trope that should be put to rest. Women on the whole do not want to "be sexy" any more, or less, than men do. I think women want to be taken seriously, and on their own terms, just like men. > And while it might be nice for the men who dominate all desirable, successful professions, does this help the median man? They're all individuals, after all. No, it doesn't. The fact that Jeff Bezos is a man or a woman does not affect my life at all. But, as a man, I have an easier time networking and working with other men in my field.
    - citizenpaul 5y ago
      >think "everything is easier for women because they're sexy" is an old trope Pretending that this is a trope is harmful to discussion. Women can easily make it to 30yo without ever personally having to deal with solving any problems they have if they are pretty. This does not however mean women don't have legit problems. However the gap of assistance options men have vs women is incredibly vast.
      - nasmorn 5y ago
        Men are not even helped if they are hot. My wife will often not acknowledge the physical qualities of men she thinks little of. As if they are not hot just because they are assholes. Women are strange like that often. Men might decide a woman is not as hot as she is crazy but they will not simply pretend she is not hot.
      - 5y ago
- prestigious 5y ago
  You are going to have to back up men dominate all desirable successful professions… more women doctors are being produced than men for instance
  - cjohnson318 5y ago
    Here's an excerpt from the first hit on Google for "percentage of fortune 500 companies run by women". > During the first quarter of 2021, 41 women will lead Fortune 500 companies. That’s just 8.2 percent, but an improvement from the 33 companies in 2019 and 24 in 2018. Going back 20 years, there were just two companies on the list that were run by women, according to Fortune. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/record-number-women-took-over-fortune-500-companies-2020-n1252491 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/record-number... There's more women doctors, but that percentage hovers around 35%, which is about the same as the number of women in leadership positions in U.S. federal and state government.
    - wahern 5y ago
      Women constitute the majority of both medical students and law students in the United States. See https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/press-releases/majority-us-medical-students-are-women-new-data-show https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/press-releases/majority-u... and https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2019/03/pisarcik-women-outnumber-men-in-law-school/ https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2019/03/pisarcik-women-out... Although that won't necessarily translate to a majority of practitioners because women are much more likely to suspend or leave a career for family. There's a similar, albeit trailing, trend for business school. https://www.mba.com/information-and-news/research-and-data/why-women-are-applying https://www.mba.com/information-and-news/research-and-data/w...
    - mahkeiro 5y ago
      That's purely a US figure. In western Europe, 60% of medical graduate are women (It's almost 66% in my country). Then more women drop out of this carrer path because they can, not because they are forced out. If I take a personal example, when studying at my university (in the top 15 QS global ranking), I had 6 girl friends that studied different fields, from physics to material science. Only one of them is still an engineer today. All by choice are now, yoga teachers, home consultant, mom at home, school teacher, etc. For my male friends maybe one decided to do something completely unrelated. I'm getting more and more suspicious about this world (at least in Europe) is unequal because of men. Women are making choice too.
- mdorazio 5y ago
  Did you really just call out the parent comment for being demeaning when you yourself are sitting here saying that women, as a group, choose undesirable and unsuccessful professions? Please stop.
  - cjohnson318 5y ago
    I did not say that "women, as a group, choose undesirable and unsuccessful professions". I would say that as a group, women are doing the best they can, it is just that men tend to have greater opportunities than women, even though the capabilities of women and men are comparable. I believe that women have a harder, longer road to professional success in our society, and that this is plainly evident.
throw737858 5y ago
There absolutely is an option to skip career and family. It is 2021, social reality is that women can be breadwinners too. And it will be more and more difficult for women to find a breadwinner.
- LunaSea 5y ago
  Actual reality is that they aren't in majority of cases despite representing a larger percentage of college graduates.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    In my experience, successful women would rather be single moms than be a breadwinner and support a stay-at-home husband.
noisy_boy 5y ago
For those lambasting the parent comment, ignore the phrasing and let us go by stats. Count how many women with successful careers you know that are married to unemployed men (to stick to the point the parent makes, let us skip cases where both husband/wife are working). Now do the same count with genders switched. Observe the differential - for the record, it is clear that there are complex reasons behind this difference (children being a big one) but we can't ignore the fact that this choice is much more "socially normal/acceptable" for a woman compared to a married man being unemployed by choice.
- throw737858 5y ago
  It is not "socially normal/acceptable" to be single parent, yet 60% of young parents are single. You are both out of reality.
  - noisy_boy 5y ago
    What would surprise a person more in today's context in US: hearing that child's parent is divorced/single parent (which by your stats is 60% for young parents, so pretty common) OR hearing about a successful woman with a husband who has chosen to be unemployed? You can keep twisting things but we are talking about what is "typical".
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Is that because a married couple is counted as one parental unit and each divorced individual as 1 for a total of 2 therefore making the number high?
    - throw737858 5y ago
      It was in some article, "58% milenials"
brnt 5y ago
> Especially a problem because for almost all men a career and supporting family (maybe the hardest thing to figure out in life) is non optional If you are going to let yourself be hammed in by such a traditionalist view of family and your inability (or maybe: lack of initiative) to get a footing in life, sounds like your setting yourself up as a victim. I live and work across Europe, and I have never encountered men or women being held back like that. Couples I know stick together because they want to, not because of economic reasons or outdated economic views on family. Hell I've been holding down the fort while my wife was working. And vice versa. I mean, its 2021, our parents were hippies! My dad was out of work for half of his life but my mom not a single day. My real world seems utterly unrelated to what these men seem to think. Perhaps they just need to get out there a bit more?
graphtradr 5y ago
What about the breadwinners half the women are saddling up to? We have never had symmetry as humans in this area. Low status males don't get to fuck as much. That has always been the case for all human history. This is nothing new.
xwolfi 5y ago
Yeah, I proposed the idea to my wife and she called me a lazy loser if I do that. It's interesting how I somewhat agree, but would never call her that if she floated the idea to stop working to raise our daughter. And she's paid more than me, and has a PhD. She still consider me a breadwinner who must win and herself a disempowered victim who need support :D
citizenpaul 5y ago
I’ve attempted this discussion all over the internet. It does not go well would be a tame statement. There seems to be a pervasive belief that men do have this option equally available to them. Only half? My exp is more like 80% shack up with a breadwinner. Even with half of women that means max 25% of men get this option.
- runamok 5y ago
  I mean if you are calling it "shacking up" that might explain why it doesn't go well. I don't think most would say men have it equally available but I'd certainly say it's more available than it was in the past just like women having jobs that can allow them to be the primary breadwinner are much more prevalent in 2021 than it was in 1981. I do know some male stay at home dads but not as many.
- buildingmateri 5y ago
  My comment was strongly upvoted (50+) so I believe the HN community understands this dynamic. I mean if you go outside Western bubbles e.g. all of Asia Latam etc. 99% of women seek to marry a breadwinner over having their own career, closer to how it was 50 years ago here in the US, a dynamic that's hard to miss. The 50% I mentioned is from a competitive ivy league school where you get a major career leg up. If 50% of female friends who went to an ivy have tapped out from career making, yes, it's easy to imagine how it's still the widespread norm even in US
  - citizenpaul 5y ago
    Probably because HN is something like 95%+ male demographic and career focused. The rest of the internet does not seem to agree based on my testing the water. Women (self identified of course) seem especially interested in pushing that men could simply stay at home if they wanted.

cjohnson318 5y ago

> Especially a problem because for almost all men a career and supporting family (maybe the hardest thing to figure out in life) is non optional... What do you mean? Of course those are optional. If you don't want a career, you're not going to have one. If you don't want to get married and support a family, then you don't have to. I mean, "saddle up to a breadwinner" is an extremely demeaning thing to say about a whole class of people. The reality is that men dominate all desirable, successful professions, so the probability of a man "saddling up" to a woman that makes significantly more than him is very small.

exporectomy 5y ago
Without a career or at least some sort of good job, most men are extremely unattractive as long term partners for women. They can't just find a wife to support them while they look after the kids. So they'll end up without a career and without a family, which can be a very sad existence. For women, families are easier to come by regardless of career status.
- throw737858 5y ago
  Imagine some people retire in peace at 50. What a sad, sad, pathetic existence :)
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    Retirement is often sad and pathetic.
    - graphtradr 5y ago
      Exactly. I am almost 50 myself. Retire and do what? Wait do die? Drink wine all day and wait to die? There isn't much to me that is worth doing that wouldn't produce some kind of income. Still so much I want to do yet, I don't have time for retirement.
      - kwdc 5y ago
        Why retire at all? Depending on what you want to do, why not just do it for as long as you can?
      - SyzygistSix 5y ago
        Ride bicycles and/or motorcycles. Travel. Hike. Read. Learn things. Volunteer. Cooking is fun. Gardening as well. I'm at a loss for how people can get bored and I don't even game or watch much in the way of movies or television. I think for some people they get attuned to work so much that they don't remember what life is like without it.
        ryandrake 5y ago
        Totally agree. I don’t think I’ve been bored since I was a teenager. Every day I think to myself, all the things I could do with extra time in the day, if I didn’t have to work for a living. I am counting down the days until I retire! My nightmare actually is I die the day after I retire, just as I’m getting ready to start living my life!
        exporectomy 5y ago
        Have you actually experienced a long period (year or more) with no obligations like work or school? It's much easier to be motivated when you're busy than when there's no real need for your effort or deadline for anything. I know some people manage great and have very active retirements but some just fade into passivity. Keep an eye out for the danger warned by John Mellencamp - "Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
mattparcens 5y ago
Potentially demeaning nomenclature aside, do men and women have a differential opportunity to [better phrase], and if not, is this fair? And while it might be nice for the men who dominate all desirable, successful professions, does this help the median man? They're all individuals, after all.
- cjohnson318 5y ago
  Based on my experience, I do not believe women have a better or easier "differential opportunity" when it comes to finding a partner and starting a family than men. I think "everything is easier for women because they're sexy" is an old trope that should be put to rest. Women on the whole do not want to "be sexy" any more, or less, than men do. I think women want to be taken seriously, and on their own terms, just like men. > And while it might be nice for the men who dominate all desirable, successful professions, does this help the median man? They're all individuals, after all. No, it doesn't. The fact that Jeff Bezos is a man or a woman does not affect my life at all. But, as a man, I have an easier time networking and working with other men in my field.
  - citizenpaul 5y ago
    >think "everything is easier for women because they're sexy" is an old trope Pretending that this is a trope is harmful to discussion. Women can easily make it to 30yo without ever personally having to deal with solving any problems they have if they are pretty. This does not however mean women don't have legit problems. However the gap of assistance options men have vs women is incredibly vast.
    - nasmorn 5y ago
      Men are not even helped if they are hot. My wife will often not acknowledge the physical qualities of men she thinks little of. As if they are not hot just because they are assholes. Women are strange like that often. Men might decide a woman is not as hot as she is crazy but they will not simply pretend she is not hot.
    - 5y ago
prestigious 5y ago
You are going to have to back up men dominate all desirable successful professions… more women doctors are being produced than men for instance
- cjohnson318 5y ago
  Here's an excerpt from the first hit on Google for "percentage of fortune 500 companies run by women". > During the first quarter of 2021, 41 women will lead Fortune 500 companies. That’s just 8.2 percent, but an improvement from the 33 companies in 2019 and 24 in 2018. Going back 20 years, there were just two companies on the list that were run by women, according to Fortune. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/record-number-women-took-over-fortune-500-companies-2020-n1252491 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/record-number... There's more women doctors, but that percentage hovers around 35%, which is about the same as the number of women in leadership positions in U.S. federal and state government.
  - wahern 5y ago
    Women constitute the majority of both medical students and law students in the United States. See https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/press-releases/majority-us-medical-students-are-women-new-data-show https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/press-releases/majority-u... and https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2019/03/pisarcik-women-outnumber-men-in-law-school/ https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2019/03/pisarcik-women-out... Although that won't necessarily translate to a majority of practitioners because women are much more likely to suspend or leave a career for family. There's a similar, albeit trailing, trend for business school. https://www.mba.com/information-and-news/research-and-data/why-women-are-applying https://www.mba.com/information-and-news/research-and-data/w...
  - mahkeiro 5y ago
    That's purely a US figure. In western Europe, 60% of medical graduate are women (It's almost 66% in my country). Then more women drop out of this carrer path because they can, not because they are forced out. If I take a personal example, when studying at my university (in the top 15 QS global ranking), I had 6 girl friends that studied different fields, from physics to material science. Only one of them is still an engineer today. All by choice are now, yoga teachers, home consultant, mom at home, school teacher, etc. For my male friends maybe one decided to do something completely unrelated. I'm getting more and more suspicious about this world (at least in Europe) is unequal because of men. Women are making choice too.
mdorazio 5y ago
Did you really just call out the parent comment for being demeaning when you yourself are sitting here saying that women, as a group, choose undesirable and unsuccessful professions? Please stop.
- cjohnson318 5y ago
  I did not say that "women, as a group, choose undesirable and unsuccessful professions". I would say that as a group, women are doing the best they can, it is just that men tend to have greater opportunities than women, even though the capabilities of women and men are comparable. I believe that women have a harder, longer road to professional success in our society, and that this is plainly evident.

throw737858 5y ago

There absolutely is an option to skip career and family. It is 2021, social reality is that women can be breadwinners too. And it will be more and more difficult for women to find a breadwinner.

LunaSea 5y ago
Actual reality is that they aren't in majority of cases despite representing a larger percentage of college graduates.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  In my experience, successful women would rather be single moms than be a breadwinner and support a stay-at-home husband.

noisy_boy 5y ago

For those lambasting the parent comment, ignore the phrasing and let us go by stats. Count how many women with successful careers you know that are married to unemployed men (to stick to the point the parent makes, let us skip cases where both husband/wife are working). Now do the same count with genders switched. Observe the differential - for the record, it is clear that there are complex reasons behind this difference (children being a big one) but we can't ignore the fact that this choice is much more "socially normal/acceptable" for a woman compared to a married man being unemployed by choice.

throw737858 5y ago
It is not "socially normal/acceptable" to be single parent, yet 60% of young parents are single. You are both out of reality.
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  What would surprise a person more in today's context in US: hearing that child's parent is divorced/single parent (which by your stats is 60% for young parents, so pretty common) OR hearing about a successful woman with a husband who has chosen to be unemployed? You can keep twisting things but we are talking about what is "typical".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Is that because a married couple is counted as one parental unit and each divorced individual as 1 for a total of 2 therefore making the number high?
  - throw737858 5y ago
    It was in some article, "58% milenials"

brnt 5y ago

> Especially a problem because for almost all men a career and supporting family (maybe the hardest thing to figure out in life) is non optional If you are going to let yourself be hammed in by such a traditionalist view of family and your inability (or maybe: lack of initiative) to get a footing in life, sounds like your setting yourself up as a victim. I live and work across Europe, and I have never encountered men or women being held back like that. Couples I know stick together because they want to, not because of economic reasons or outdated economic views on family. Hell I've been holding down the fort while my wife was working. And vice versa. I mean, its 2021, our parents were hippies! My dad was out of work for half of his life but my mom not a single day. My real world seems utterly unrelated to what these men seem to think. Perhaps they just need to get out there a bit more?

graphtradr 5y ago

What about the breadwinners half the women are saddling up to? We have never had symmetry as humans in this area. Low status males don't get to fuck as much. That has always been the case for all human history. This is nothing new.

xwolfi 5y ago

Yeah, I proposed the idea to my wife and she called me a lazy loser if I do that. It's interesting how I somewhat agree, but would never call her that if she floated the idea to stop working to raise our daughter. And she's paid more than me, and has a PhD. She still consider me a breadwinner who must win and herself a disempowered victim who need support :D

citizenpaul 5y ago

I’ve attempted this discussion all over the internet. It does not go well would be a tame statement. There seems to be a pervasive belief that men do have this option equally available to them. Only half? My exp is more like 80% shack up with a breadwinner. Even with half of women that means max 25% of men get this option.

runamok 5y ago
I mean if you are calling it "shacking up" that might explain why it doesn't go well. I don't think most would say men have it equally available but I'd certainly say it's more available than it was in the past just like women having jobs that can allow them to be the primary breadwinner are much more prevalent in 2021 than it was in 1981. I do know some male stay at home dads but not as many.
buildingmateri 5y ago
My comment was strongly upvoted (50+) so I believe the HN community understands this dynamic. I mean if you go outside Western bubbles e.g. all of Asia Latam etc. 99% of women seek to marry a breadwinner over having their own career, closer to how it was 50 years ago here in the US, a dynamic that's hard to miss. The 50% I mentioned is from a competitive ivy league school where you get a major career leg up. If 50% of female friends who went to an ivy have tapped out from career making, yes, it's easy to imagine how it's still the widespread norm even in US
- citizenpaul 5y ago
  Probably because HN is something like 95%+ male demographic and career focused. The rest of the internet does not seem to agree based on my testing the water. Women (self identified of course) seem especially interested in pushing that men could simply stay at home if they wanted.